20/04/2026
FOR YOU DAWN (In the first picture Dawn is sitting next to me)
At Deer Park Institute, time had a different texture. It didn’t rush or drag, it simply rested… like breath noticing itself.
That’s where I met Dawn.
She had come from Victoria, Canada, carrying with her a quiet sky. Not the loud kind that demands to be seen, but the kind that holds constellations without announcing them. Her place was always at the window in the meditation Hall. If I sat just right, there would be a clear line between us. Not conversation, not even gesture… just that soft recognition. Eyes meeting, a smile passing like a shared secret.
Her posture was always upright, but never rigid. As if her spine remembered something ancient and kind. There was a warmth around her, the kind that doesn’t try to comfort, yet does. Being near her felt like there was no edge between where she ended and the rest of us began.
Somehow, a small group of us gathered… a few older bodies, sitting quietly among the young seekers. There was something unspoken in that circle. A knowing without needing to name it.
And then, like a gentle bell, came the knowing… she had only a few months left in this lifetime.
She wrote to the sangha. Not with heaviness, but with a kind of luminous honesty. Sharing her joy, her presence, her readiness. There was no drama in her words. Only clarity… and a tenderness that stayed.
We wrote back. What does one say to someone standing so gracefully at the threshold? Perhaps nothing new… only what was always true.
Right now, her partner wrote…About her final days. Being driven to the shore. Letting the sun rest on her skin. Turning toward warmth, toward source… as if completing a quiet circle. No resistance. Just a deep, almost sacred yes.
There is a sadness that sits in me. Not loud, not overwhelming… but steady, alongside it, something else… a deep gratitude. For that shared gaze across meditation Hall. For that silent companionship. For the way she showed me that presence can be complete, even in its brevity.
She has left…yet, there is a small, quiet space in me that feels shaped by her.
And somehow, that space feels like light.
[In Remembrance]
